By
Former Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson
February 4, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Much
of the discussion about what to do about illegal immigration comes from
churches. Since there is much to criticize in the policies and activities
of various churches, I should probably start the discussion with my own
church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

It's
important to understand that the LDS Church does not claim infallibility
for its church leaders. There is no Pope. Its leaders, including the Church
President, are mortal men subject to mortal weakness and error. Many LDS
Church members, however, have the mistaken belief that every word uttered
by a church leader comes straight from God. This infantile attitude excuses
church members from having to think for themselves and figure things out.
It absolves them from having to study, ponder, and make hard decisions
about political issues and candidates. It places undue burdens on Church
leaders to carefully weigh every word they write or speak. Finally, it
places serious burdens on legislators when Church members think the lawmakers
are not being sufficiently obedient to the perceived wishes of the church.
Elected officials are not obliged to follow the opinions of Church leaders
in making policy decisions.

Some
members also believe that anything that comes from within spitting distance
of the church's headquarters in Salt Lake City is divinely inspired and
not open to question or debate. That, of course, is ridiculous. Church
employees are human beings. They have weaknesses. They make mistakes.
They have opinions. Some of them apparently have political agendas.

In the
Spring of 2011, the LDS Church Public Communications Department issued
three "official" statements on immigration. While ostensibly
meant to clarify the Church position, the statements actually further
muddied the issue. The very fact that there were three different statements
in quick succession suggests that the statements were incomplete or incorrect,
and required revision. In addition, the statements were pointedly hostile
toward state legislators, were filled with political propaganda, and contained
conflicting contradictory messages.

One
statement contains the following passage:

"...
any state legislation that only contains enforcement provisions is likely
to fall short of the high moral standard of treating each other as children
of God."

While
it has a nice ring to it, that statement doesn't actually make much sense.
If a policy is worthy of becoming a law, it is worthy of enforcement.
Many laws have enforcement provisions. There's nothing unusual or sinister
about an enforcement provision in a law. Enforcement makes a law work.
Enforcement makes a society safe, orderly, and civil. High moral standards
are enhanced by the appropriate enforcement of law. When laws cease to
be enforced, then disorder, chaos, and anarchy result. That statement
is simply not true.

Why,
then, would such a statement appear as a policy position of the LDS Church,
which otherwise supports obedience to law and protection of our border?
The answer is that the author of the church statement appears to have
derived his or her arguments from the writings of Leftist advocates of
open borders. The church statement is loaded with propaganda terms used
by the Left to spin the argument in favor of open borders. The "enforcement-only"
argument is a good example. Demonizing so-called "enforcement-only"
provisions in law comes straight from the propaganda playbook of the radical
Left.

And
what might the high moral standard be? The implication is that it's the
standard of those who propose amnesty. This is the standard that tells
foreigners to just "Come on in, y'all. Never mind the law, because
eventually you will get amnesty." Under this standard, the flood
will continue, including criminals, rapists, identity thieves, drug dealers,
human smugglers, welfare seekers, terrorists, and a horde of third-worlders
who will soon overwhelm the capacity of the U.S. to assimilate them. This
is the standard that sees no value in American culture and doesn't seem
to mind that our culture will evaporate as our children are assimilated
into the bleak cultural abyss of whatever comes across the border. That
is, if they survive the influence of the drug cartels, human smugglers,
and terrorists. This is the standard of chaos and cultural suicide. If
that's the high moral standard, then we are in deep and terrible trouble.
I suggest that the real high moral standard is the one which demonstrates
a commitment to honoring and obeying the law and the U.S. Constitution.

All
of this controversy, of course, is about Arizona's state law on immigration
(SB1070), which put into state statute the important federal laws that
were being ignored. My state senator, Sylvia Allen, has beautifully explained
the need for laws like SB1070: "We don't have a fence on the border.
In the absence of a fence, laws are the only way we have of protecting
our border. Laws discourage illegal entry into the U.S., just as a proper
fence would, although not always as effectively. Lacking a fence, the
law is all we have. The law is our fence. Take away the law, and you erase
our border altogether."

Another
example of propaganda in the LDS church statements appears in the following
passage:

"The
history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is
cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved.
This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one
group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage."

There
are two problems with this passage. First, it incorrectly equates two
different types of events: deportation and mass expulsion.
Mass expulsion is a political term that denotes a genocidal attack on
an entire population that drives them out of their home country. It is
usually a politically motivated assault on a particular ethnic or religious
group. Kosovo, Rwanda, and the Holocaust are examples of mass expulsions.
Deportation, on the other hand, is quite different. Deportation is the
removal of individuals who have either entered a country illegally or
who have violated the law or become otherwise undesirable, even if they
entered legally. Deporting someone who has entered the country illegally
is not a mass expulsion. Mass expulsion involves the illegal ejection
of a citizen. Deportation is the legal ejection of a NONcitizen. Mass
expulsion is directed against whole classes of people, based on religious
beliefs or ethnicity. Deportation is directed against individuals
based on individual behavior. Mass expulsion is a lawless event accomplished
by force. Deportation is an orderly procedure that occurs after
a legal proceeding. Mass expulsion violates the lawful rights of citizens.
Deportation protects the rights of citizens by curtailing the lawlessness
of noncitizens. Mass expulsion takes a person OUT of his home country.
Deportation returns a person TO his home country.

Advertisement

It is
simply inaccurate to use the term mass expulsion for deportation.
The Left, however, intentionally transposes these terms all the time to
confuse and propagandize the issue. That is, to inflame emotions, incite
ill will, and unfairly paint as a racist any legislator who supports enforcement
of law. It is a classic example of the character assassination employed
by the Left to demonize those who oppose them. I do not believe that the
deceptive Marxist technique of character assassination came from the leaders
of my church. I believe it came from one or more agenda-driven, politicized
individuals in the Church Public Communications Department who wrote those
statements.

The
second problem with that statement is the pious warning against "targeting
any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage."
This incorrectly implies that lawmakers who have supported legislation
that deals with illegal immigration have targeted certain ethnic groups
in a racist, discriminatory way. But it is the crime that is being targeted,
not any particular ethnic group. Whether the illegal alien is Chinese,
Mexican, Pakistani, or British (ethnic groups which have been among those
arrested for illegal border crossing), it is the crime of entering the
country illegally that is the focus, not ethnicity. To suggest otherwise
is an insult to the good legislators who have tried to solve the serious
problems of illegal immigration. It is also another false argument commonly
employed by the radical Left.

A third
false Leftist argument in the church statement is the claim that the issue
of illegal immigration "is one that must ultimately be resolved
by the federal government." That is simply not true. The federal
government does not have exclusive jurisdiction over immigration law.
Furthermore, states may enforce laws passed by the federal government.

Insisting
that only the federal government can solve the problem serves the Leftist
goal of open borders because it guarantees that the borders will remain
open. The federal government has had more than 20 years under both Republican
and Democratic administrations to implement immigration laws already on
the books, but they have not acted. Leaving immigration law enforcement
up to the federal government means that the flood of illegals into our
country will continue, and the resulting problems will increase. Leftists
would like everyone to swallow the argument that the states have no right
to pass laws regarding illegal immigration because Leftists don't want
to stop the flood. They would like everyone to embrace Karl Marx's dream
of a classless, borderless society. If it were up to the Left, there would
be no borders at all.

Elected
officials work in a minefield of lies, mistruths, half-truths, deceit,
manipulation, propaganda, incivility, and other unsavory aspects of the
human soul. While some may succumb to the pressure of elected office,
the good ones rise above the muck and do the honorable thing to the best
of their ability. Contrary to recent comments coming out of Utah by both
church leaders and organizations like the Sutherland Institute and Sunstone
magazine, these good politicians are not driven by bigotry, xenophobia,
or hatred, and they are justified in rejecting suggestions that they are.
Politicians like Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce and Utah State Representative
Stephen Sandstrom who have sponsored laws like SB1070 are motivated by
a desire to honor the Constitution, protect American citizens, handle
taxpayer funds responsibly, live up to their oath of office, and protect
the best interests of their respective states and the U.S. The Church
may be frustrated after years of dealing with the difficult problems of
illegal immigration, but character assassination isn't helpful. The solutions
of the Left will lead to chaos and ultimately destroy our country.

When
the Church embraced the Utah Compact and issued its multiple, stumbling
statements on immigration, it threw good legislators under the bus. It
also threw entire congregations into turmoil as immigration wars broke
out among church members throughout the country. The worst aspect of the
blazing contention that arose among church members was that there were
no answers. Faced with a variety of contradictory church policy statements,
the disagreements could not be resolved. They could only be argued ...
endlessly.

Ultimately,
many church members lost respect for church leadership at all levels as
they observed the use of deception, slander, and other Marxist tools to
further an unconstitutional political agenda. When LDS elected officials
oppose the Utah Compact and the messages of the 2011 church statements
on immigration, they are not rejecting Church leadership; they are rejecting
Marxism. Church members have a choice. They can make the effort to learn
correct principles, including the Church's long-standing policies regarding
the U.S. Constitution, obedience to law, and immigration, or they can
let the radicals in the Church Public Communications Department do their
thinking for them.

It is
appropriate for churches, individuals, and charitable nonprofit organizations
to relieve the suffering of the homeless, the hungry, the feeble, and
others who are in need, even if they came to the U.S. without permission.
Charity and humanitarian efforts are the realm of those organizations
and individuals. Government, however, is not a charity. The role of government
is to protect the rights and liberty of its citizens. That concept may
have been forgotten, but it is still a true principle. Our government
does not exist to help the suffering people of the world, including every
suffering foreigner who wants to live in the U.S. Thomas Sowell expressed
this idea well in a recent column:

"The
purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either
humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws
and policies is to serve the national interest of this country. There
is no inherent right to come live in the United States, in disregard of
whether the American people want you here. Nor does the passage of time
confer any such right retroactively."[1]

Mr.
Sowell is absolutely correct.

Subscribe
to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!

Enter
Your E-Mail Address:

The
leaders of the LDS Church may not have recognized the propaganda buried
in the Utah Compact or the inflammatory, deceptive language of the statements
issued by the Church Public Communications Department. But the creators
of the Compact and the authors of the Church statements knew perfectly
well what it all meant. They selected their words carefully and subtly
embedded the propaganda into both the Compact and the Church statements.
To the degree that the authors knew what they were doing, they are guilty
of deceiving the Church leadership. Meanwhile, the rest of us must deal
with the aftermath. The radical Left, emboldened by their success in Utah
and Arizona, is marketing the Utah Compact to state legislatures all over
the country. They have already started planning which honorable state
legislators to take out in the November 2012 elections. Those being targeted
are, of course, those most loyal to the U.S. Constitution. Those doing
the targeting are anti-American Marxists and socialists in alliance with
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose sole interest is profit, and the Catholic
Church, which took a hard-left turn years ago. Thanks to the duplicitous
and incompetent political meddling of the LDS Church's Public Communications
Department, some of our best elected officials are targeted for defeat
this year. Politics can be a dangerous game.

Karen Johnson
served in the Arizona legislature for 12 years, from 1997 through 2004
(AZ House of Representatives) and 2005 - 2008 (AZ Senate). Her all-time
favorite committee assignment was chairing the Federal Mandates and
States' Rights Committee. During her service in the legislature, she
supported the Second Amendment, individual, property and of course states
rights, as well as the Right to Life, and she still does. Karen and
her husband, Jerry, have 11 children and 35 grandchildren. She believes
strongly in the doctrine of liberty and does not desire to be tethered
to ANY particular party.